During the manufacture of production tires for automobiles, or for any other vehicle for that matter, each freshly molded tire must be processed, that is, balanced, ground and graded, to put that tire in a final, marketable condition. To do this processing, each tire is mounted on a tire holding fixture operatively associated with a particular tire processing machine.
The general construction of tire holding fixtures and of tire processing machines is well known in the relevant art, as is evident from the co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/645,743, filed on Jan. 5, 1991, and the references cited therein. The co-pending patent application is assigned to the assignee of the present invention, and the disclosure thereof is incorporated herein by reference. It is to be noted, however, that while the co-pending application discloses a tire holding fixture having particular utility with heavy weight truck tires, the present invention is intended to be utilized with automobile tires.
Given the continuing American "love affair" with the automobile, it is desirable to supply the relevant markets with ample quantities of spare or replacement parts for the autos. One of the automobile parts that is replaced relatively often is the tires. Accordingly, it is desirable for certain retailers to have an adequate supply of tires on hand at all times. Tire manufacturers have to meet this retailer demand in order to preserve their market share. Therefore, tire manufacturers need to produce a large amount of tires in a small amount of time.
As discussed above, before the freshly molded tires are ready for retail customers, the tires must be appropriately processed. Processing of the tires takes time. Specifically, each tire must, in turn, be mounted on a tire fixture which holds the tire during processing. The fixtures generally comprise two shiftable, simulated wheel halves which mimic the holding properties of an actual wheel when shifted into a closed position. These fixtures must hold the tire quite firmly because the tires are often inflated to a desired pressure and rotated at high speeds during processing. After processing, the wheel halves are then shifted into an open position so as to facilitate tire removal therefrom.
In order to firmly hold the tires on the fixtures of the prior art, somewhat elaborate and complicated locking means is provided to hold the simulated wheel halves together in the closed position. While these locking means are often effective, they often require significant time to lock and unlock. This significant set-up time period results in lost revenues to the tire manufacturer because the time spent in set-up could be more profitably spent processing tires for retail sale. In addition, the locking means should be able to maintain the simulated wheel halves in alignment to provide for proper processing of the tires. Accordingly, additional time may have to be spent to insure that the prior art locking means is maintaining that alignment.
The present invention is intended to solve some, if not all, of the problems presented by tire holding fixtures, and the associated locking means, of the prior art. The invention provides an automatic quick release locking means for automatically holding the simulated wheel halves together which can maintain the halves in alignment within 0.003 inches, thereby reducing or eliminating set-up time and alignment checking time. This can result in greater revenues to a tire manufacturer.